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Most valley cities have already snuffed out pot shops

A California Supreme Court ruling Monday that local governments in the state can ban storefront medical marijuana outlets won’t have much affect in some area cities such as La Puente, Duarte and Whittier.

Officials in those cities said they don’t have any storefront pot shops due to current laws, and that they likely will continue following the ruling.

Duarte has never had any pot shops, a spokesman for that city said Monday. Whittier has a moratorium on the shops and only had one shop in the past, which closed under pressure.

And La Puente, which once was considered the medical marijuana capital of the San Gabriel Valley, hasn’t had any pot shops for more than a year.

However, longtime opponent of medical marijuana dispensaries, La Puente City Councilman Dan Holloway, declined comment, saying he had not had time to read the ruling.

The ruling came in the case filed after Riverside city lawmakers used zoning powers to declare storefront pot shops as public nuisances and ban the operations in 2010. The Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center, part of the explosion of retail medical marijuana outlets, sued to stop the city from shutting it down.